Berlitz Review

Course Overview

Ratings

VA:RO [1.7.0_948]

Average User Rating

Rating: 1.7/5 (6 votes cast)

Review

To begin with, this reviewer feels they should say that this is absolutely not the right learning tool for a complete beginner. While there may be aspects of this course that make it a useful tool for brushing up on a language you have started to forget, the Berlitz foreign language package is not one that I would recommend to anyone beginning to learn a language for the first time.

Content

So let’s begin with what you do get from this package. Well, there’s a leaflet, and a CD-ROM. And that’s pretty much it. It’s designed to be easy to use and focuses heavily on the idea that nobody seems to have the time to pay attention to what they’re learning these days. Instead of just sitting in your car bored on the way to work, or standing on the train listening to music, Berlitz seems to say why not learn Spanish instead. Which would be great, if it actually worked. The standard CD-ROM has speech recognition software and “interactive” games that you can attempt to immerse yourself in, but compared to the wide range of technology available in these sorts of programs now, it doesn’t stand up particularly well against what you might buy. For example, the interactive aspect of this product is a little misleading, as I will address later.

Berlitz do make a phrase book for Spanish that is available on the market as a stand-alone book. This book itself is pretty useful, with a wide range of phrases and an easy to follow color coded system for looking up whatever it is that you need. It’s hard to say if that counts as a positive, however, as this is pretty standard for this kind of literature. As a basic phrase book, it doesn’t stand out as being particularly fantastic, but it also doesn’t lack anything vital. The pronunciations in phonetic English are a bit off, but again, that’s the same whichever phrase book you use. For this course, you can purchase it with the book or without, but if you are planning to buy this course, then I would definitely advise getting the book as well. The CD-ROM instructions and games by themselves are simply not multimedia enough to assist with detailed learning.

The main problem is that essentially the phrase book, as this package, is geared up for travel instead of language-learning, making it a little bit too stuffed full of information. The book also focuses much more on simultaneously teaching you a Spanish way of life, mentioning various Spanish customs and what to expect when you go. It also includes what some might consider un-necessary detail. This might be useful if this is what you’re learning Spanish for, but it’s really just wasted space if you’re learning the language to simply learn the language. Instead of creating a more comprehensive and relevant text book, this is really all that you can buy within the Berlitz set, and it is rather disappointing. Another money-saving device has clearly been the transcript leaflet. It’s great that it’s been thought of to be included, but the practicality of it just detracts from the apparently immersive quality of the CD-ROM games and activities, though it really depends on what kind of learner you are. For more visual learners, it might be a good idea to be able to follow the words as they’re being spoken to you, but if you’re looking to make a second language more natural for you, then you really need to learn to focus on the spoken words. Essentially, the leaflet helps if you are having trouble following the audio, but a good package wouldn’t have audio that is so difficult to follow. This transcript leaflet is also not included with all versions of this foreign language course, so it’s really up to you as to what kind of learner you know yourself to be. There are a lot of different versions of this course, so check the contents carefully before buying the one that you feel is best for you, if you really feel you want to buy this course.

Usability

The Berlitz model is one of the cheapest DIY foreign language courses that are available, but as soon as you begin your first lesson, it’s very easy to see why. There just isn’t the same kind of interaction that one needs to get with a foreign language course. This course plunges you right in the deep end of language with long dialogue, run-on sentences, and a confusing lack of direction as to where to begin. This is purported to be a more useful way to immerse your self into a language, but for a complete novice, it really is just too overwhelming. I can understand the logic behind this, of throwing you into the deep end so you have to try and work your hardest to keep up with the language, but in practice it just doesn’t work. You find yourself replaying the same parts over and over again, and just getting frustrated with the speed of the speaker instead of enjoying the language-learning experience. One of the positives about learning a language from home is that you should be able to take your time getting to grips with it, and this immersion technique just rids you completely of that.

Now, let’s return to the interactive nature of the CD-ROM. When working on the spoken conversation sections, you have to follow the set patterns exactly of what you have just tried to learn, otherwise the system just doesn’t recognize it or make any intelligent response. Every sentence you make is highly specific, but often only in a singular detail. For example, if you are learning how to order in a restaurant, you will first have to learn how to be seated, then how to order, then how to pay, etc etc, learning piece by piece in a very repetitive and not entirely useful way. It is not really possible to skip any of these sections without messing up the recorded conversation on the other end, and this really isn’t conducive to genuinely learning a language.

It’s just not particularly instinctive, and requires that you follow a very rigid set of goals for every lesson, regardless of whether they are all useful to you or not. Certain digital contents are also not particularly Mac-friendly, although the virtual flashcards are mp3 versions, which do work on iTunes, etc. However, the flashcards don’t have visuals, only audio, which isn’t very helpful. Definitely something to consider when buying this product. It really tries to advertise the ease of using this product anywhere; at home, in the car, on your portable electronic device, but really, the best environment for learning is not on-the-go. If you want to learn a language, you really need to sit down and pay attention to what it is that you are doing, otherwise you end up with a course like this, that doesn’t really teach you the language.

Cost

While you are much better off spending your money elsewhere, there is a potentially positive point to be made here, which is that the Berlitz package is a very reasonable price compared to other. To be fair, this is clearly reflected in the quality of what the learner is receiving, with many aspects such as the packaging and instructional booklets clearly being hastily thrown together with very little sense of structure.

Still, if price is the underlying factor in making your purchasing decision, then that’s all that can really be said. It certainly isn’t an expensive program to undertake, but after a few lessons you will probably wish that you had decided to opt for a more expensive package, especially if you are a beginner. And if budget really is that important of an issue to you, perhaps if you’re already spending a lot of money on a holiday, then this reviewer advises simply buying the phrasebook.

Summary

There are certainly some positives to be noted with this product, specifically the cost, and in addition to that, the use of genuine Spanish accents on the CD-ROM. Not only is that much more useful than having another American voice teaching you the wrong pronunciation as is the case with far too many of these courses, but it does help you to immerse yourself a little more in the cultural conveyance of the language itself. Warning: This package is for learning Castilian Spanish, and NOT Latin American Spanish. This is worth noting here, as it isn’t particularly clear on the packaging.

However, the course is certainly geared towards either those who already know a little of the language (regardless of how it is marketing itself, you would have a very difficult time being a beginner on this course) or those who are taking it solely for the purpose of going on holiday. The detail in the individual lessons is either far too much or far too little, and the package as a whole is very definitely geared up towards more tourist customers. To genuinely learn Spanish in a way that is of practical and personal use, then this is not the foreign language package to choose. There are far better courses out there that give you a much more comprehensive grasp of a language, and this is certainly more of a supplementary course than a primary source for language-learning.

Pro & Contra

cheap

…but not worth it

no structure at all

not good for beginners

…

Screenshots

5 User Reviews

The “total immersion” basically is just people who are having dim conversations which are too quick for starters and too dull for intermediaries. It is not friendly with Mac, inconvenient and has poor vocabulary as well. Berlitz does not possess a very positive reputation and you would not wonder why you receive such offers through mail.

Up till now, I’m still having a hard time trying to navigate the lessons inside this package. Actually, I expected a product that would really provide me with a very prearranged set of lessons which would assist me in understanding French. So far, I have discovered an extremely slackly set of tools as well as incoherent exercises. While you can probably learn French using this package, you would really need to exert some effort in figuring out the most excellent method to apply the tools. I am a little dismayed and consider if I should have purchased a classier package that would actually lead me to understand French.

This is not a course for the absolute beginner. But, if you are familar with the basics, I have found the conversations very useful. They are spoken a little fast, but I expect that will happen when I am speaking with a native speaker, and you can play the conversations, sentence by sentence, with the written sentence set out below. It does not set out a lot of grammer, but I am also taking a very grammer heavy course, and it helps to have learned some of the conjugations from Berliz to keep up with the other course.

0 stars to Berlitz in general, not just this location. The one in my city is desperate for new teachers and told me they would love to have me. I was then asked to attend training for 2 weeks, AKA skip my university courses for 2 weeks. I knew I could do it if I didn’t miss any more for the rest of the semester and said yes. I was told they would reserve me a place immediately.

Instead, 2 weeks later, I was called by the director of Berlitz in my center and told he was sorry, but a place for me couldn’t be reserved and they chose only 1 of us to go. I thought, “Well why didn’t they try to reserve the places BEFORE the deadline? Then this wouldn’t have happened and we all could have gone.” I later found out they had given the 1 opening to the guy I recommended the job to…who isn’t even a native speaker.

A month later I get a call from Berlitz again out of the blue after not hearing from them since. “We would still love to have you, please go to training in 2 weeks”: I stupidly agreed. I should have known after the first issue that something was wrong. I went to training, missed 2 weeks of classes, and paid my own travel and food costs. Luckily, my hotel costs were covered. But the others rode the train 3 hours a day for 2 weeks because Berlitz didn’t want to pay for them all to have a hotel.

The trainer and I seemed to see things differently and I could tell she didn’t like me. I was exhausted from traveling there and being expected to sit 8 hours a day in their training classes. She took my constant yawning and stretching as me being lazy and not wanting to be there in the first place (why would I have bothered coming if I didn’t want to be there?), told me this, and made me cry.

I finished the 2 tough weeks of “training” and came back and made an appointment with Berlitz to sign the contract. I arrive and the director says he was sorry, but the trainer didn’t write a positive report about me and they wouldn’t hire me after all.

I lost about 200€ and 2 weeks of my time because of Berlitz. 0 costs will be reimbursed. I am fine with it because the language center teachers here don’t work so many hours anyways and I will eventually find something better, but I am just more upset at the fact that she had written down after week 1 that she didn’t find me “compatible” with Berlitz and let me spend time and money to go to week 2 anyways. There is a reason why my mates in training kept telling me Berlitz has a bad reputation in all of their cities. And now I understand why.